Thirty days that rearrange a year

Whoever stands in Ramadan out of faith and seeking the reward will be forgiven what came before of his sin. That is the promise, and it is attached to the standing itself, not to any particular count.

The Prophet ﷺ prayed it in the masjid on three nights and the people gathered behind him. On the fourth night the masjid could not hold them, and he did not come out. In the morning he said: I feared it would be made obligatory upon you and you would be unable to carry it. So he stopped for their sake, not because the prayer was disliked.

After him, Umar found the people praying scattered, a man alone and a man with a few behind him, and he gathered them behind Ubayy ibn Ka’b. Walking through the masjid another night and seeing them in one row he said: what an excellent innovation this is. He meant new in its arrangement, not new in its origin, since the Prophet ﷺ had prayed it himself and only stopped for fear of it becoming compulsory.

Aisha was asked how the Prophet ﷺ prayed in Ramadan. She said he did not exceed eleven units in Ramadan or outside it, and she described four, then four, then three. That report is in Bukhari and Muslim and it is the strongest single description of his own night prayer.

The report of Umar’s gathering reaches us in more than one wording. One route in Malik’s Muwatta names eleven. Other routes, and the settled practice of Madinah and Kufa in the generation after, name twenty followed by three of witr. Twenty is what the Hanafi, Shafi’i and Hanbali schools came to, and it is what most masjids pray. The people of Madinah later prayed thirty six, adding rounds in place of the rest between the sets, and Malik saw no harm in it.

So here are the positions without a thumb on the scale. Those who hold to eleven argue from Aisha’s report and say that a described sunnah is not improved by addition. Those who hold to twenty argue from the practice of the Companions and the generations after them, which was public, in Madinah, and uncontested at the time, and from the fact that no text limits the number of night prayer units at all.

Ibn Taymiyya, who cannot be accused of leniency, wrote that the matter is wide: whoever prays twenty, as most do, has done well; whoever prays thirty nine has done well; whoever prays eleven or thirteen has done well. If your masjid prays twenty and you prefer eleven, pray with them and sit out the rest quietly, or pray eight and stay for the witr. Do not turn a night of mercy into an argument in the shoe rack.

Whoever stands with the imam until he leaves, it is written for him as though he stood the whole night. That single sentence answers the question of whether to leave after eight units when the imam is praying twenty. Stay, and you are credited with a night you did not have to give.

There is a second reason to pray it in company, and it has nothing to do with reward arithmetic. A person praying alone in a room in the twenty fourth night of a hard month will find reasons to stop. A row of shoulders will carry you when your own intention will not.

The congregation is better and it is not a condition. If you are unwell, if you are alone with small children, if the only masjid is an hour away, then pray it at home. A woman praying at home has the reward of the prayer, and a man kept away by a real obstacle is not sinning.

Pray as a household if you can. One of you leads, however plainly, and the others stand behind. Children who see a prayer begin in their own living room will remember Ramadan as something their family did, not something a building did.

O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may attain taqwa. Then: whoever among you witnesses the month, let him fast it.

The obligation falls on the Muslim who is adult, sane, settled and able. A child is not obliged until puberty. The Companions still had their children fast and made them woollen toys, so that when one of them cried for food they gave him the toy until sunset. Train them; do not burden them.

Whoever is ill or on a journey, then a number of other days. Allah intends ease for you and does not intend hardship for you. The excuse is in the Book itself, and taking it is obedience, not weakness.

And upon those who can fast only with hardship, a ransom of feeding a poor person. That is fidya, the ransom: for the permanently ill and the very old who will not recover a lost day, one poor person fed for each day missed.

A woman who is menstruating or in postnatal bleeding does not fast, and she makes up the days later. That is not a deficiency in her; it is a rule given to her. She does not make up the prayers, only the fasts.

Pregnancy and nursing are where the schools genuinely split. Some hold she makes up the days like a sick person. Some hold she pays the ransom and feeds instead. Some hold she does both if she broke the fast out of fear for the child rather than for herself. All three are held by serious scholars. Ask the one your family follows, decide once, and stop carrying the question around.

Deeds are by intentions, and every person has what he intended. The intention of a fast is a resolve in the heart. There is no formula to recite, and the sentences printed on Ramadan calendars are a custom, not a sunnah.

The majority hold that the obligatory fast needs its intention formed at night, before dawn. The Maliki school allows one intention at the start of the month to cover all of it, which is a real mercy for anyone who sometimes wakes late. Getting up for suhoor is itself an intention, since nobody eats at three in the morning by accident.

Eating and drinking on purpose. Sexual intercourse. Making yourself vomit. The arrival of menstrual or postnatal bleeding, at any hour of the day.

Intercourse during a day of Ramadan is the one that carries a heavy expiation: freeing a slave, or fasting two consecutive months, or feeding sixty poor people. The man who came to the Prophet ﷺ saying he was ruined was given that scale, and when he could do none of it he was given dates to feed others with, and then told to feed his own family with them when he said nobody in the city was poorer than him. Even the expiation was answered with mercy.

Everything else is measured by that list, not added to it freely. A rule that keeps people from a fast they could have kept needs evidence, not a feeling.

Forgetting and eating. Whoever forgets he is fasting and eats or drinks, let him complete his fast, for it was Allah who fed him and gave him drink. Do not spit it out in a panic and do not start the day again. Finish the mouthful you were already chewing, then carry on.

Vomiting that overtakes you. Brushing your teeth, and the siwak, the tooth stick, which the Prophet ﷺ used while fasting. Rinsing the mouth and nose in wudu, though without going deep, since that instruction was given to the fasting person specifically. Swallowing your own saliva. Tasting food on the tongue and spitting it out, which Ibn Abbas saw no harm in. Blood tests. A shower, or swimming, or standing under cold water for relief, which the Prophet ﷺ did.

Waking up in a state of major impurity does not spoil the fast; the Prophet ﷺ would reach dawn in that state and fast the day. A wet dream while fasting does not break it either, since it is not chosen.

Injections and inhalers are modern questions and the scholars are genuinely divided. The common line drawn by contemporary councils is that what nourishes breaks the fast and what does not nourish does not, so a vaccine or an antibiotic injection is treated differently from a drip of nutrients. If you depend on an inhaler to breathe, use it, and ask a scholar afterwards rather than risking your lungs to a question you can settle in the evening.

Take suhoor, the meal before dawn, for in suhoor there is baraka, blessing. It is not merely fuel. Zayd ibn Thabit measured the gap between the Prophet’s ﷺ suhoor and the prayer at about the length of fifty verses, which is to say: eat late, close to the line, not at midnight.

At the other end, do not hold on. The people will remain upon good as long as they hasten the breaking of the fast. He would break it before praying Maghrib, with fresh dates, or dried dates, or a few mouthfuls of water if there were none. There is no virtue in adding minutes that were never asked of you.

The words reported at the moment of breaking are simple: dhahaba al-zama, wabtallat al-uruq, wa thabata al-ajr insha Allah. The thirst has gone, the veins are moist, and the reward is fixed, if Allah wills.

A day missed for a real excuse is made up later, one for one, at any time before the next Ramadan. There is no order to keep them consecutive. Aisha used to make up her days in Shaban, the month before, and nobody criticised her for the delay.

A day broken deliberately with no excuse is a serious matter and it is not beyond repair. Make it up, ask for forgiveness plainly, and do not let one broken day become an abandoned month. The one who repents from a sin is like the one who has no sin at all.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ made zakat al-fitr obligatory as a purification for the fasting person from idle talk and indecency, and as food for the poor. It has two purposes and both are stated in one sentence: it cleans up the month you just kept, and it puts food on a table that would otherwise be bare on the one morning of the year when nobody should be hungry.

It is due from every Muslim who has more than his own household’s food for that day and night. It is not a tax on the wealthy. Almost everyone owes it.

Ibn Umar said: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made it obligatory, one sa’ of dates or one sa’ of barley, upon the slave and the free, the male and the female, the young and the old among the Muslims, and ordered that it be paid before the people went out to the prayer.

A sa’ is a volume, not a weight: four cupped handfuls of an average adult. In weight it works out at roughly two and a half to three kilograms depending on what is being measured, which is why masjids quote a slightly different figure for wheat than for rice. Abu Sa’id al-Khudri listed what they used to give: a sa’ of food, or barley, or dates, or dried yoghurt, or raisins. The principle is the staple food of the place, not a particular grain.

This is the live disagreement and it deserves to be stated straight. The Hanafi school permits paying the value in cash, arguing that the aim named in the text is feeding the poor, and money buys what a household actually needs. The Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali schools hold to food itself, arguing that the Prophet ﷺ specified food while money existed in Madinah, and a specified act of worship is not swapped for a convenience.

Neither side is careless. In practice, most masjids outside the Muslim world collect cash and buy staples in bulk, which satisfies both readings at once: you hand over money, food arrives at a door. If that is what your masjid does, give through them and the question does not arise for you.

The head of a household pays for himself and for everyone he is responsible for: his wife, his children including one born before dawn on the night of Eid, and any dependent living under his roof. It is one sa’ per person, not one per family.

It is given to the poor and the needy. The classic advice is to keep it near: the poor of your own city have the first claim, and a relative in need is both a charity and a keeping of the ties of kinship. Where you cannot find need locally, giving through a trustworthy body that moves it quickly is fine, as long as it moves before the prayer.

Before the Eid prayer. That is the deadline in the text and it is not decorative: whoever pays it before the prayer, it is an accepted zakat, and whoever pays it after the prayer, it is a charity among charities. The obligation itself is missed.

Paying early is fine and was done. Ibn Umar used to give it a day or two before Eid, and the Companions would pay it one or two days ahead. If your masjid collects from the twentieth night, pay then and stop carrying it. The commonest failure is a person who fully intended to pay and was still intending it while the imam said the takbir.

Wash. Ibn Umar would perform ghusl, a full bath, on the morning of Eid before going out to the prayer place, and the practice is reported from a number of the Companions. Then wear the best clothes you own. They do not have to be new, and nothing in the sunnah asks you to buy anything.

Eat before you leave, and only on this Eid. The Prophet ﷺ would not go out on the morning of Eid al-Fitr until he had eaten some dates, and he would eat them in an odd number. On Eid al-Adha the order is reversed: he would not eat until he returned. The eating before the prayer on this day is a small public statement that the fast is genuinely over.

Go by one road and come back by another. He did that, and the scholars have read it every way from greeting more people to letting two streets witness for you. Take the children the long way round and let it be the strange thing they remember.

He wants for you ease and does not want for you hardship, and so that you may complete the number and magnify Allah for having guided you, and so that you may be thankful. The takbir on the way to the prayer is that verse being obeyed out loud.

Say it from the night the moon of Shawwal is announced until the imam comes out for the prayer. Say it walking, in the car, on the stairs, and say it so children can hear the sound of a crowd that is not chanting for a team.

The best known wording comes from Ibn Mas’ud and other Companions. There are several reported variants and none of them is a battleground.

Two units, prayed in congregation, in the morning after the sun has risen and lifted clear of the horizon. There is no adhan and no iqama for it. Jabir said plainly: there was no call and no iqama on the day of Eid.

Extra takbirs are said before the recitation: in the well known practice, seven in the first unit including the opening one, and five in the second. The counts differ a little between the schools and none of the differences invalidates anyone’s prayer. Follow the imam and do not count out loud.

The sermon comes after the prayer, not before it, which is the opposite of Friday. Sitting for it is the strong sunnah though it is not obligatory, and walking out of it while the imam is speaking is the small rudeness that spoils a good morning.

Everyone goes out. He commanded that the young women, the women in seclusion, and the menstruating women be brought out, so that they might witness the good and the gathering of the believers, and the menstruating women keep away from the prayer itself. A masjid that quietly leaves half its people at home on Eid morning has departed from the sunnah, not preserved it.

The Companions would say to one another, when they met on the day of Eid: taqabbal Allahu minna wa minkum. May Allah accept from us and from you. Ibn Hajar records the chain as acceptable. It is a better sentence than a generic greeting because it asks for something.

Then do the ordinary things properly. Visit the relative you have been avoiding. Give the children money and let them keep it. Eat in daylight without flinching. And check who is alone: Eid is the loneliest morning of the year for a convert with no family in the city, and one invitation fixes it.

Ar-Rubayyi bint Mu’awwidh described it: we would fast and we would have our little children fast, and we would make them a toy of wool. When one of them cried for food we would give him the toy until it was time for the iftar.

Two things are in that report. They involved the children, and they distracted the children. Neither shouting nor a lecture appears anywhere in it. A half day fast, a countdown, a job to do at sunset: those are the tools, and they are eleven hundred years older than any parenting book.

Decorate. Lanterns in a hallway cost very little and they tell a four year old that something important is happening. A paper chain with thirty links, one torn off each evening, does more than any explanation.

Give every child a job at iftar: the one who pours the water, the one who counts out the dates, the one who calls everyone to the table. A job outranks a rule.

Let them break a half day fast at noon with a small celebration, and mean it. Do not let the first fast be a test they can fail.

Read one short surah aloud together before the food, every night, the same one for a week. By the twenty ninth they will be saying it with you without having been asked to memorise anything.

Take them to the masjid at night at least once, even if they last twenty minutes. The noise, the shoes, the crowd and the late hour is the memory. Nobody remembers a lesson; everyone remembers being out past bedtime with their father.

The Lantern Sky is a quiet page where a child lights a lantern for something they are grateful for and watches it rise. It is made for exactly these nights.

The Kids’ Codex is the whole story told at their height, with the prophets, the animals of the Qur’an and small games. Open it on a phone at the table between Maghrib and Isha and see what happens.